Kim Ninh of Mukilteo works at the consulting firm Mercer in Seattle. An accomplished home cook (she posts recipes on YouTube), the Vietnamese refugee expounds on the versatility of the humble bao. While it’s traditionally filled with Chinese sausage, pork and egg, she also stuffs the bun with various meats or veggies. She encourages readers to use their imagination. Stuff it with whatever filling you want, savory or sweet. She also turns the pillowy bao into a sandwich of sorts by simply reshaping the dough.

“This is my mom’s recipe. Her name is Kim Thi Nguyen. She came to the U.S. in 1982.

She made these all the time when I was growing up. It stores easily in the refrigerator and the freezer. When I was in college, I lived at home because we were poor, and I ate them all the time. She always had them around. I was one of those teenagers who slept during the day. At night, I was always in the kitchen, trying to find things to eat. My mom always made sure there was food. Banh bao was a staple along with fruit and vegetables. She would make 50, put them in a Ziploc bag and freeze them. And if we were running low, she took them from the freezer and thawed them out. Thank God for the invention of the microwave. What did the Vietnamese do back in the good old days when we didn’t have the microwave?

My parents live in San Antonio, Texas, now. They’re in their 80s. I don’t know how much longer they have. Now the bao tradition is passed on. I’m an empty nester. I make them on special occasions when my kids are home. My three kids come home during the holidays. My youngest, Matthew, is at Rutgers University. I split the bao (a la David Chang’s pork belly bun) and put in fried chicken strips for him. My daughter Franchine is vegan-ish, so tofu and pickles and crunchy vegetables in the bao for her. Emily has a sweet tooth and prefers bao with sweet fillings like custard, sweet potatoes, mung beans. I am grateful for family and food. It is a way for us to connect. Food just brings people together.”

Jan and John Renfrow worked in the Bellevue School District (for 25 years) and Boeing (for 38 years), respectively, but are now retired. Holiday meals are a time for the couple to catch up with their three grown children, usually over this dish, which features three ingredients that the Renfrow clan loves: Cougar Gold cheese, potato and crab.

“My dad passed away in 1994 of cancer. He was a Washington State University alumnus. In one of the Cougar alumni newsletters, there was an offer to purchase Cougar Gold cheese at a deep discount, $15 a can at the time. It costs as much as $35 a can now! I ordered one and decided to try the recipe they had in the newsletter. Came out really well. Everybody loves cheese. Everybody loves potatoes. Over the years I kept tweaking the recipe.

My husband and I had lobster bisque at a few restaurants. It was delicious — very rich and creamy. I thought why not try Dungeness crab with this potato soup? It became very popular. I would make a Caesar salad and serve a sourdough baguette alongside.

This recipe is about comfort, familiarity. It is bringing the family together with something that everybody feels good about.

My mom passed away in 2009, but we still have three kids and their families come over. And we still have friends come over and extended families — cousins and their spouses and nieces and nephews. Family dinners are very important to my husband and me, especially now with the kids grown up and out of the house. Family dinner is about love. And spending time together.”

Ellen Peterson is a strategy consultant with The Collective Good. She lives in Brier with her husband and daughter (and their geriatric, anxiety-ridden cat). She’s been eating this bread since the ’70s. We had a Zoom call with Peterson and her aunt, Rosemarie Ward, to get the full story behind their family-famous pumpkin bread.

“I was at a bazaar in 1973 and a lot of community organizations were selling things to raise money. The thing that made me buy the cookbook in the first place [was the dedication]. It says ‘this book is humbly dedicated to our fighting men who have finally returned home from their Southeast Asia prisoner status and to those for whom our vigil will never cease.’ That was the Vietnam War, and some of those guys never came home. … There were not so many ingredients [in the pumpkin bread recipe] and it was easy to put together. You could make it and go on and do something else while it cooked, and I had three little kids, I didn’t have a whole lot of time to be fussin’. I’ve been making it since 1973, so let’s just call it mine.” — Aunt Rosemarie, of Columbus, Georgia

“I don’t remember the first time [I ate it]. My memory is a package coming in the mail from Aunt RoRe. There was a pumpkin bread wrapped in foil just for me, and sometimes another one, but I would always get one just for me with a note that I didn’t have to share, and I didn’t share. With my dad, that was a thing, I had to hide it.” — Ellen Peterson, of Brier

“To tell you the truth, I got tired of baking them and shipping them to you, so I just wrote down the recipe. It’s always what you wanted for your birthday.” — Aunt Rosemarie

“I really started making it when I graduated from college and my mom gave me this hand-me-down, beat-up Bundt pan. I got married when I was 25, I remember making it that first fall when we were engaged. It’s been made every fall [since]. … I only make it in the fall, only Labor Day through Christmas. I refuse to make it any other time of year.” — Ellen

“It’s not secret, but if you don’t make it with corn oil, you’ll know [with] the first bite.” — Aunt Rosemarie

“Aunt RoRe and I never are [together for the holidays]. My folks live down in Pacific County, down in the Long Beach Peninsula area. I’ve been trying to get down there every other month or so, it’s just really hard for me to quarantine for long enough to get down there. My dad is in a very high-risk category and my mom is also [high-risk] just for her age. I don’t expect that we’ll see them over the holidays. This is the first year with our adult kids that we’re really struggling to wrangle them all to the same place on the same day. It’s impossible. None of us really likes turkey, so we came up with the idea that we’re going to do a Mexican feast for Thanksgiving. We’re going to have carne asada and make refried beans. We’ll still do pumpkin bread and pumpkin pies, but we are all-in on carne asada.” — Ellen

“I think this is the first year I won’t do Thanksgiving. Your Uncle Sonny died in January, and my grandsons have in-laws now, so they can’t just say we’re going to Mimi’s. They have to share time with other parts of their family. I’ll be invited somewhere, and they may ask me to make a turkey because I have been told I make a better turkey than anybody.” — Aunt Rosemarie

“[Grateful for] pumpkin bread in the oven making the house smell good and Aunt RoRe, I have you to thank for that. I want to be able to hug people again.” — Ellen

“Me too. To be in the room with all of my family where we can actually give hugs, but also give kisses. We’re just so isolated. There’s not even anybody in this house with me 24 hours a day, so I would be very, very grateful if somebody says, ‘Hey it’s all clear, you can go.’ ” — Aunt Rosemarie

Sharon Cleveland Blount is a self-described “travelista, foodie and playwright” who usually splits time between Seattle and California. Her last monologue produced before the COVID-19 lockdown was part of a program called “Letters to Our Sons.” Just as we contacted her about this recipe, her youngest son came to her and said, “Mom, it’s time … I want to learn how to make gumbo.” She makes it by feel, but the two of them came up with the ingredient amounts listed here.

“I was honored to receive firsthand culinary guidance from my best friend Nanny Ro — a down-home Louisiana native — on her prized recipe of this Louisiana mother dish. She was a sweetheart. She became my daughter’s godmother. Brielle, who’s now 28, just loved her light and her spirit and her life. … Unfortunately, Nanny Ro experienced a brain aneurysm and went into a coma and never came out of it. It was horrible. But she’s still with us, and it’s beautiful that we can still release her and her spirit and not pack it away somewhere.

While I’m making the gumbo, I think of her. Once I got the hang of it, I altered the recipe slightly and was lauded by friends to have ‘put my foot in it’ — a figurative, not literal, African American term used to praise a cook for adding all the right seasonings and ingredients, including the figurative foot of the cook, making the dish a delectable standout.

Now that we’re all home, I think we really value the time together. And there’s nothing better that sets off time together with family than good comfort food. Having family and friends gather, whenever we can gather again — that’s what I miss. But I’m thankful for those that I’m quarantined with — I just walk up to them and go, all right! It’s time! For hugs! [laughs] Because we can.

Nanny Ro is no longer with us, but she does live on through the gumbo. I do it at New Year’s and also for Kwanzaa, so it captures the season of celebrating new, fresh beginnings and all of the seven principles of Kwanzaa, which is something that everyone can embrace. I generally have a big gathering. What I can do this year is make the gumbo and drop it off, or have people come by and do a pickup — sort of a drive-by gumbo feast! [laughs] I don’t want to eliminate it, because of everything that’s been eliminated this year.

My gumbo embraces the soul. It does. And it really is all about the gumbo anyway [laughs]!”

Debbie Heindl is a registered nurse with Providence Hospice. She lives in Everett with her husband Steve and their two daughters, Grace and Rose. Tradition dictates she makes this stuffed turkey neck every year — even though she hates it.

“It came from my mother’s father’s mother, Molly Silverman. It’s an Ashkenazi Jewish dish — it’s either made with beef gut, goose neck or turkey neck. My mom always made it, she loved the stuff. My dad, he died when I was young, but he probably would’ve eaten it just because she made it. Even if he didn’t like it.

It makes a difference if you use the schmaltz (rendered chicken fat). You can’t not use it. You might say, ‘I’m going to make it with butter,’ and you can, but you’ll get something that doesn’t taste good. … A small needle is better. The thread [I use] was my aunt’s, my mother’s sister, her thread from 50 years ago. My daughters know how to make it, they’ve been cooking since they were 8 years old or sooner. They watch me do it and they agree it’s gross. I tried to staple it once, but it doesn’t work because then you have staples in your food.

The Jews love Thanksgiving. We love it. It’s all about giving thanks and food and family and tradition, it’s right up our alley. [The recipe] is tradition. It’s a nod to those who have passed. My sisters make it, my nephews and my niece make it. It’s already history. We might eat it this year, I changed the recipe and it’s not terrible now, it tastes like stuffing. I have friends who know … they ask ‘can I come over and have some of that?’ You got it, have mine.

I’m working Thanksgiving, which will be different. Then we’ll just have dinner some other night and it will just be us, won’t be [family] from out of state. I have a sister in Long Beach and the other one is in Florida.

“I’m grateful that my kids are still in school in the dining room and they’re learning well. I’m grateful none of us have tested positive yet. I’m grateful there’s hope. I wish that people would lighten up and grow up. It sounds small, but it’s big.”

Alison Miller is a teacher specializing in reading for grades K-5. She lives on Phinney Ridge with her partner and son — and when he found out she was making kugel for the photo here, he said, “What a treat!”

“I learned this recipe from my Grandma Reve. Her given name was Rita Ruth — she preferred to go by Ruth, and Ruth in Yiddish is ‘Reve.’ People outside of our family called her Ruth Bluestone. She was a great cook, specializing in Jewish — specifically Ashkenazi — dishes. Her family was from Russia, and this sweet kugel is one of those recipes that I’ve never altered. I just follow it as is.

Family recipes … you just need them at certain times, for sentimental reasons or comfort. As soon as I smell the kugel, it just reminds me exactly of my grandma’s apartment — she lived in Skokie, Illinois — and I’m transported right back there. I can see the carpet, the table, the couch, the clock …

I think of her, and my mother too, as very resilient women who have been through hardship and were always so strong and so open. I wouldn’t describe her as warm, but it’s not that she wasn’t — it just came across different. Her thoughtfulness was always there, and you knew she cared. She would always open her home to my friends and make food for them too. When I was a little kid, she always took me to ShowBiz — what’s it called out here — Chuck E. Cheese! She was a really good bowler, and she was also an amazing card player. She always had the Cubs on the radio, and the radio was always on in the kitchen. I just have a lot of great memories … I feel grateful that I got to see her so much as a child.

I was born outside of Chicago, then I lived in Washington, D.C., for about 11 years, then moved out here. And I know my sister would say the same thing, as she’s moved around the country — as you share this dish with people, the recipe spreads, because people like it and they want to share it too. It’s not super hard to make. It tastes amazing cooled right out of the oven, and also straight out of the refrigerator the next day [laughs]. And you can freeze it, and it’s easy to share.

My grandma would always make it for brunch or for a holiday. I like to make it for Rosh Hashana, which is the Jewish New Year. Almost every culture honors the new year in some way — it might not be on the same date, and it’s different traditions, but I just love that connection between all cultures, so I love to share this dish.

This year for the Jewish New Year, I talked with my mom and sister over Zoom, and we had apples and honey together with our families. We kept it simple. I don’t know what the actual new year will look like [laughs] — I just feel like there are so many unknowns with the pandemic. Right now, it’s just one day at a time. I feel very grateful for my family.

Food provides comfort and memories, and I thought maybe this would provide some comfort for someone else — someone who’s wondering what these holidays might be like, and they could find some solace in it, or make a new memory for their family. I think a lot of people are searching for those things right now.

When you see the ingredients, you’ll see why this is only cooked on the holidays [laughs]! But the recipes that are rich — that provide comfort — I just think that’s what people really need right now. I can’t wait to try some of the other recipes too.”